Laura is living in the very small town of Vail, Arizona and is contemplating entering into a live-in relationship with her lover Tom, when her sergeant dispatches her to Bisbee as lead detective in a murder of a young girl. (So much for Tom.)

The victim was found dressed up in a homemade christening type dress in a park band shell, having disappeared only the day before. The cute blond 14 year old was quite possibly the casualty of a ritual murderer.

In addition to trying to gather clues and assess the crime scene, Laura must also deal with the locals’ resentment of her - first as a female and then as an outsider from the state. Departmental politics isolate Laura and she doesn’t believe the suspect the locals believe committed the crime is responsible. On a return visit to the scene she finds a matchbook with a possible Internet nickname on it. Laura and the local officer at least agree that it had not been there earlier when the scene had been scoured.

Laura starts with NCIC and look-alike crimes. Finding a possible one, she becomes enmeshed in it when her DPS boss points her to Jay Ramsey, a contemporary from her past. Jay is a quadriplegic, founder of an Internet security company, friend of her Lieutenant and a master hacker. Her lieutenant is willing to outsource the Internet investigation to him.

Pretty quickly Jay is able to come up with sufficient Internet connections to warrant a trip to Florida where the investigation takes some very twisted turns. The plot is intricate, with a multitude of sub plots. While not distracting, they do seem to be in place as tools to flesh out the characters of the secondary principles.

The author has imbued the novel with a tremendous sense of setting, be it the Arizona desert or the Florida panhandle and, in many respects, these descriptions are more compelling than the characters.

The tension afforded by the investigation proceeds at a nonstop breakneck pace. Laura is lonely, with obvious emotional baggage that the reader cannot clearly understand. One assumes that this will be fully explained in the next novel. The less than fully developed characters are offset by the cleverness and the originality of the plot.

--Thea Davis